The Monster's Mother
by HVK
Summary: Looking into the history of Bruce Banner's troubled life, Carol Danvers comes to a sobering conclusion: becoming the Hulk was not the first time he died and got back up again anyway. Intended to be within a continuity drift of the MCU where Captain Marvel was an Avenger from the beginning, and incorporating aspects of Bruce's backstory from the comics.


_Tragedy; Doctor Banner-Drake murdered by husband._

Carol Danvers read the old headlines, her expression quite blank. If she had a conclusion already, she didn't show it.

She read it. It was a familiar story to her, and a bad one. David Banner, one of your classic smart guys who was a vicious, nasty bully with feelings of entitlement and jealousy. The kind of man who, marrying the award-winning and respected scientist Rebecca Drake, thought he owned her achievements. The kind of man, she thought with a sour look, who thought a wedding ring meant you owned your wife.

A complete bastard. The newspaper article, from over twenty years ago, hinted at the bruises and broken bones of the child Bruce Banner, and she wasn't surprised. Infuriated, sickened, but not surprised. Probably the only reason that David Banner survived those early days was because Doctor Drake-Banner was away from home, forced to attend to business matters, far from the child she loved, and the husband she thought loved her.

David reminded her of every backstabbing, self-centerd egotist she had the pleasure to blast. Jealousy over your kid being smarter than you? No wonder Bruce, these days, tried to hide everything that marked him. He'd learned it the hard way.

She read the article thoroughly; David Banner had tried to kill his son. In a protective rage, Rebecca, home at least, had launched at him, and almost broke his neck on the spot; the first time she had been in time to help her son, it seemed. It was only dumb luck that saved Banner's life, and horrible luck that allowed him to sink the knife into her chest.

She died trying to break his neck. Even in death, she had been snarling. The expression the police had taken was strikingly familiar.

The Hulk looked exactly the same.

And the reports of little Bruce felt wrong to her. It became clear why when she read that the hospital was surprised, and relieved, to find that he had survived having being thrown against the wall.

He'd been a small boy then, his skull not entirely formed. And he'd been thrown at it hard enough to crack the wall.

So, some time later, she found an opportunity to say to Bruce Banner, "So when was the first time you realized you had powers before your accident?"

Bruce gave her a brief look, and then away. He looked like a hunted animal, about ready to flee. "I don't know what you mean, Captain."

She considered her next words. "That injury you got, on the night your mother passed. That should have killed you."

"...Luck."

"Your blood was all over the wall."

Bruce sighed. It took him a long time to work up the nerve to say something. "Promise me that this does not leave the room."

"I promise."

He fidgeted a while longer, thinking deeply. Eventually, he spoke. Briefly, words hanging here and there, but he spoke honestly, a rare thing for him. A dangerous thing. "Did you ever read The Modern Prometheus? The original novel about the Frankenstein Monster, I mean."

"I guess?" Banner was working his way to something, and she was willing to wait. She had to be sure. She needed to know.

"The monster was made by a father who never loved it. Who hated it the second it came to life." Bruce laughed bitterly, as if at an old wound that still hurt. "It was ugly. The doctor decided he'd made a monster, and made it _wrong. _So he abandoned it, left it to suffer, and the monster turned hateful, alone on a world where everything never stopped hurting it."

_Hulk hurts, _Carol had once heard the other part of Bruce whispering. _Hulk never stops hurting. Why? Why does everything hurt Hulk?_

Bruce took a moment longer to compose his thoughts. "Suppose the monster found someone who genuinely loved it. Who knew it for what it was. Who took care of it, nurtured it, taught it what a person _should _be. I think that, maybe, the monster might have been a good person. Or tried to be, even against all the odds. After all, it had a good example to live up to. It wouldn't matter that the doctor hated it so much."

"We talking about the monster, or you?"

Bruce smiled faintly. His eyes glowed dimly green. "What difference is there, anymore?"

He paused, perhaps for effect.

"My father threw me," he said, distantly. "I hit the wall. I remember a cracking sound and then... nothing. And then?" he shrugged. "I got back up. Mom didn't want me to die. It was why _she _died." His face curdled up, and again his eyes glowed green.

Just for a moment, an expression of deep and abiding rage flashed, like fire in the sky. An old anger, and a strong one.

Anger, she had heard it said, was a gift.

"I got back up," he said again. "I _died. _I know that for a fact. But I got back up again anyway."

"Just like what you do as Hulk," Carol mused.

Bruce gave her a look. "That's what the other guy does. I just can't seem to stay dead. Suppose I'm just stubborn like that. Maybe the, the accident, and the super soldier serum, maybe it woke up something else in me. Let out everything that I couldn't be. Let the other guy out."

Well, her suspicions were confirmed at least. "What happened to your mom isn't your fault," she said. It felt an obligation to say that.

"I know," Bruce said, and for a moment, his voice _doubled, _something growling and deep there too. "I know who to blame, and he died too. Not that night, but he died the same." He gave her a look. "There was something else I thought that night, when I saw her trying to save me."

She nodded at him. "Yeah?"

"...That i should have been big enough, and strong enough, that she wouldn't have had to do that. That I should have been able to save her. I wanted to _stop _people from my father from doing things like that."

She half-smiled at that. "Now you are. When you need to be."

He nodded. "Maybe if the monster hadn't gotten so full of hate, he would have been a hero somehow, too."


End file.
